Perspective: a journey of understanding with an inspiring Sunday start

Perspective comes from a journey requiring patience and understanding, empathy and appreciation of others – and not just of their triumphs but of their failures as well. This counts in business as much as it does in our personal lives. Searching for a broader perspective? I highly recommend you take a break from the rush of the world. Embrace the opportunity to get loads of valuable perspective, all in one place. I discovered such a “one-stop-perspective shop” in less than an hour this week – when “the trumpets called” and led me through a trail of tales told individually and in concert that I found very enlightening and inspiring.

Sometimes Sunday network television, even in prime winter playoff season, brings more than football or politics to our homes. Such was the case this past weekend when CBS Sunday Morning - Jan30 22, always a well-produced, thoughtful and thought-provoking show, aired the last edition of its 42nd season since it began in January, 1979. This episode, as usual hosted by veteran Jane Pauley, was more memorable than most to me, because it presented such a well-rounded series of stories on diverse topics and people from all walks of life. I thought it summed up some of the best things about humanity, this country, and some other parts of our world - while confronting a number of our most vexing challenges too.

Journeying from Montgomery, Alabama to Cayuga, New York - with several more fascinating points in between - what made this episode so compelling was that it offered stories on people, issues and innovations of the type that get discussed – and argued - a lot here on LinkedIn and in our society. And though it’s not an inherently political show, I felt that the producers admirably covered multiple subjects and viewpoints along the wheel of politics, society and culture.

Mercy to museums to music to meals, massive c-stores to mesmerizing performing arts. And peace.

David Pogue discusses with attorney Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy) his ongoing work to save the lives of 145 death row inmates and others wrongly convicted and arrested, and we hear what compelled him and members of the Equal Justice Initiative he founded to help establish the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, both in Montgomery, to share the story of “slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias” – both institutions only a few blocks away from the site of one of America’s largest slave auctions. The segment is instructive, chilling and heartwarming in turns, much of the latter stemming from the self-effacing Stevenson’s simple, sensible attitude and supreme commitment to continuing his mission. And it’s not about getting rich for the brilliant Harvard Law and Kennedy School of Government graduate - that is if you measure success just by money.

Other segments celebrated a ‘family business’ of architecture as helmed by the inimitable Frank Gehry, the Toronto-born designer of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Disney Theater in Los Angeles and Experience Music Project – now the Museum of Pop Culture – in Seattle, among scores of other distinctive buildings across the globe. As correspondent Bill Whitaker finds, the amount of artistry, preparation and technology that go into Gehry’s often fanciful building designs might surprise (or irritate) anyone, but whatever you think of his work, you have to admire this phenomenally successful man’s challenge to budding architects to “elevate their art” to inspire people.

Other segments cover:

·????????Venerable newsman Ted Koppel shares the good news of New Orleans’ multi-generational Preservation Hall Jazz Band emerging from sporadic Covid shutdowns to bring music back to the Crescent City. One of its revered musicians, Doreen Ketchens, who ‘owns’ the corner of St. Peter and Royal Streets with her family’s band, is once again showing her world-renowned clarinet chops - busking for passersby in the French Quarter.

·????????Becky's Place, a down-home diner in Dawson Springs, Kentucky which has reopened and is back to serving bountiful breakfasts as a “refuge of normalcy” for local people devastated by tornadoes that hit the area in December. Here, as hosted by Jonathan Vigliotti, another side of America is shared - how people rise to the need to help their neighbors. In this case, it’s all about the comfort of good food and conversation that owner Beck James has brought back to her small community by reopening her local institution – helping restore hope for recovery and a better future among her patrons.

·????????2nd generation Korean-American Michelle Zauner shares memories and recipes with correspondent Tracy Smith in honor of her mom - and what she learned from her mother about food and family before she died of cancer in 2014. It’s a fascinating profile of a journey through grief and homemade kimchi that led the now 32-year-old Zauner to write the bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart, and what she and her indie pop band Japanese Breakfast are up to now.

·????????It wouldn’t be Texas without a Texas-sized gas station, would it? CBS reporter Luke Burbank interviews Arch Aplin III, the co-founder of Buc-ees, proud to be noted as having the cleanest roadside restrooms in America – as well as having two of its facilities named, respectively as the largest convenience store and longest car wash in the world. The company continues to expand beyond its 1982 roots with stores in new states, and if you haven’t been, it is indeed an awe-inspiring stop for kitsch, coffee, barbecue and – yes, a bio-break - along the roads of Texas and several other places across the southern U.S.

·????????Binghamton, New York hosts an unusual event each year called Luma, a projection arts festival that uses buildings as a playground to display the latest in lighting and computer technology – illuminating, animating and transforming their facades into spectacular works of visual art. One of the prominent players in this field, Ryan Uzilevsky, details for correspondent Serena Altschul and the audience his dreams and designs for the genre and describes the methods that his Light Harvest Studio uses to mesmerize thousands viewing his epic creations projected upon these unusual canvases.

·????????CBS completes the line-up for this wide-ranging and satisfying 48 minutes or so (sans commercials) of Sunday celebration of humanity and the arts with a thoughtful interview of Kristen Stewart on growing up in Hollywood, from 11 years old in Panic Room, through the Twilight saga and all the way to playing – at 31 - the late Princess Diana in Spencer, and a fun feature with Will Shortz of the New York Times Crossword fame with Faith Salie of CBS on the internet’s latest craze: Worldle (if you haven’t played yet, you will). And to cap it off, we see the majestic trumpeter swans of New York’s Finger Lakes region honking and flapping in their peaceful winter playground.

Watching this collage of video vignettes and witnessing the sensibility, passion and perseverance of those featured gave me hope that if we commit to learning from our best people and practices and working together, leaders like those here on LinkedIn can unite to solve humankind’s challenges AND achieve success for many more in their business and personal lives. These aren’t mutually exclusive objectives. The key is perspective gained from being willing to listen, and see others’ points of view. That’s the start of something great – greater than the sum of its parts - in all of us.